Questions for Malcolm Gladwell

In the October 20, 2008, issue of the magazine, Malcolm Gladwell writes about genius and precocity.

What can you tell us about other fields and their geniuses? For example, in mathematics it’s known that all the great minds were at the top of their productivity in their twenties. Ido Green Menlo Park, Calif.

David Galenson would say that great mathematicians almost by definition belong to the Picasso “conceptual innovators” category. Math genius takes the form of some kind of revolutionary, conceptual breakthrough. But I’m guessing that outside of a few specialized fields like that—or, say, physics—most disciplines are divided between the Picasso types and the Cezanne types.

How does your model work for other creative professions such as architecture? Is it possible that different paths within the arts require fundamentally different tools and processes? In fact, it’s just the opposite. Architecture traditionally has been an old man’s profession, with a few notable exceptions. Kate Feather New York, N.Y.

I have to confess that I don’t know enough about architecture to render an opinion. My guess is that it is such an intensely collaborative field, and that actually getting to build a building is so hard, that there are tremendous obstacles against the young making their mark. You don’t hear of any precocious neurosurgeons for the same reason. It’s just a field that requires an enormous amount of preparation and experience in order to succeed.

What are the implications of your story for parents as far as setting expectations for their kids? Manish Shah Roselle, Ill.

It means that parents should resist—as much as possible—the temptation to try and predict where their children’s gifts lie. Cezanne was saved by the fact that no one in his life stood in the way of his pursuit of his art—even though, by any standard, he was a poor artist as a child and a young man. We are deeply attached to the idea that genius is always signaled in early life—that greatness always has some precursor. But that plainly isn’t always true. What’s far more important for a parent, I think, is simply to encourage their children to pursue and persist at the things they love. And worry about how good they are later.

Has there been any research done on really talented, early-blooming painters, writers, and musicians fading away despite persevering well into their old age? Siddhartha Vaidyanathan Evanston, Ill.

One of the most painful aspects of the prodigy is the seemingly inevitable decline. I’m thinking of a dissolute Orson Welles, finishing his days doing television commercials, or Salvador Dali’s steep descent into hucksterism and mediocrity. Time often isn’t kind to the precocious. I’d rather take Cezanne’s early struggle and later triumph any day.

Ben Fountain’s story touches the heart—and, for a fellow lawyer-writer, a nerve. Are late bloomers generally less prolific than prodigies? Or once they make a breakthrough, is it like a dam bursting? Philip Huynh Toronto, Ontario

Here’s what Galenson would say: Ben Fountain’s never going to be prolific. Every novel is going to require as much research and back and forth and agonizing as his first. I still can’t get over the fact that Mark Twain took something like eight years to write “Huckleberry Finn.” Eight years! But I’ll settle for three great Twain novels over a dozen mediocre novels by someone else.

To me the most striking example of an older genius is that of Leoš Janáček, who wrote his greatest works in his seventies, after he fell madly in love with a married woman some thirty-seven years younger. He described his experience as having a new shoot on an old oak tree, and wrote her hundreds of passionate letters. And then there is Giuseppe Verdi’s “Falstaff”… Richard Altman New York, N.Y.

It’s funny, isn’t it? How we continue to be surprised by the creative efforts of the middle-aged and the old? One can as easily imagine an alternate universe in which we believe that the greater life experience of the old gives them a built-in advantage when it comes to creating art.

Why are all of the examples you use as in your essay men? Could it be because the charming love story, in which the talented artist is supported by family, friends, and admirers until his or her strengths finally take root, is even less common for female artists? Women who have taken fierce hold of slow-growing artistic talents, and have done whatever they needed to do in order to hone them—and to keep their artistic self-confidence alive—have usually done so in the face of years of skepticism and resentment, creating art in time they have “stolen” from office responsibilities, care of aging parents, and the preparation of cupcakes for children’s birthday parties. Can we stop equating “genius” with “male”? Mary W. Walters Saskatoon, Saskatchewon

Point taken. Although the Ben Fountain story actually involves a gender reversal—the wife goes off to work and the husband stays home with the kids. That’s one of the reasons I was attracted to their story. But you are quite right: to tell the story of late blooming with women, instead of men, at the center, is to give a very different—and more complex—account.

I recently saw of Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York” and couldn’t help but think of your article on late bloomers. Kaufman, who’s fifty, gave us Caden Cotard, a character who embodies genius as experimentation or, tragically perhaps, experimentation without genius. I was wondering what you thought of a film that captures the trials and costs of experimentation that you describe in defense of late bloomers. Amon Malaika New York, N.Y.

I’ll be honest: I didn’t like the film at all. I don’t think I understood it, and I found it profoundly depressing. Late bloomers are supposed to fulfill our belief in human possibility—not defeat it. (But then I’m a glass-half-full kind of person.)

Where do you feel you fit personally in the “genius continuum”? Marco Kaye Portland, Ore.

Well, I’m hardly a genius. But if I was, I’d much rather be the late bloomer than the prodigy—particularly since I’m no longer young myself.

You make a pretty convincing case for the necessity of having an Emile Zola in one’s life. Yet presumably late bloomers still continue to bloom when they’re forced to make their own ends meet. Or do they? How disadvantaged is a late bloomer without patronage? Karen Karbo

It is not impossible, I suppose, for the late bloomer to bloom without a patron. It’s just really hard. Remember, that a late bloomer works through endless trial and error and experimentation—and that takes time. Cezanne needed his subjects to come for 180 sittings. If you’re paying your own bills, that kind of creative approach is a practical impossibility. That’s why I said, at the end, that the late-bloomer’s life is necessarily a love story: you have to have someone in your corner, or the approach that you are relying on quickly becomes untenable.

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